Houdini – Creating A Peg Board, Part 1

The purpose in the creation of a peg board is to give the objects something to be anchored to in the scene. This involves creating a second digital asset.

I begin with copying my brick_instance from teapot_brickify and pasting it out onto the object level in the network view. I then go into the network view and delete a few of the nodes that I do not need for example box1, polybevel1 and the merge1 node. This is easily done by selecting the nodes and pressing delete or backspace on the keyboard.After I have deleted the nodes I no longer need I am left with the tube that I made earlier that will now act as the peg for the peg board I am about to create.In order to reposition the peg I use the centre properties to adjust the expression so that the tube is lower towards the grid. The centre code was edited to remove a +0.5 from the end of the expression.

Whenever I return to the object level I want to create a subnet of the two nodes grid_object1 and brick_instance I select the 2 nodes in question and use the button above the network view that looks like an open cardboard box this creates the subnet which I now rename to peg_board.

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Whilst remaining in the network view I need to create a SHOP network by using the tab menu and typing in shop network I can then place the shop network node into the network view like so.

I then want to apply the base material to the shop network so I press the W key when clicked on the network view and the following window appears the the side of the network view. I can then navigate through the peg_board into the shopnet1 and select base material and apply it with exporting relative paths. I need to now rename the grid_object1 to pegs and the brick_instance to peg_instance to organise my nodes a little better. As you can see from the screenshot below in the material tab of the pegs parameters the material is also assigned.

I progress further by creating an object_merge1 node by using the tab menu and typing in object which will bring up the object merge option. I then place the object merge node into the network view (node view)

I now create a copy node using the tab menu and then place the copy node into the network view as shown in the stages below.